Rage if you want, but it appears the reason is related to graphics drivers.

Apple has now confirmed via its Mountain Lion upgrade page that previously published limitations on some 64-bit Macs will extend to the final release. This means that several otherwise 64-bit capable MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Pros will indeed be restricted from upgrading to OS X 10.8 when it goes public later this month. And according to information found in the recently released golden master (GM), the limitation appears to be related to graphics, as we originally suspected.

When the first developer preview of Mountain Lion was seeded to developers earlier this year, the release notes listed hardware requirements showing that some early 64-bit Mac models were not compatible. (Lion is likewise 64-bit, and can run on any Core2 or newer 64-bit Intel processor.) As such, Mountain Lion developer previews would not run on the earliest Mac Pros, MacBook Pros, iMacs, and other hardware.

Macs supported by Mountain Lion

iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)

MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)

MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)

MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)

Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)

Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)

Xserve (Early 2009)

Apple declined to tell us the reasoning behind leaving some of these models out of potential Mountain Lion upgrades, but we suspected it is related to an updated graphics architecture that is designed to improve OS X's graphics subsystem going forward. Our own Andrew Cunningham suspects the issue is more specifically related to graphics drivers, since the GPUs not supported under Mountain Lion have drivers that were written before 64-bit support was common.

Information included with the first Mountain Lion GM now corroborates the connection to 32-bit graphics drivers as the culprit. While Mountain Lion is compatible with any Mac capable of running a 64-bit kernel, the kernel does not support loading 32-bit kernel extensions (KEXTs). Furthermore, Macs with older EFI versions that are not 64-bit clean won't load Mountain Lion's 64-bit only kernel.

As you might have already guessed, graphics drivers are KEXTs under OS X. And the GPUs in some of those early 64-bit Macs were deprecated before 64-bit KEXTs became common. Since those older drivers are 32-bit, Mountain Lion won't load them. We believe Apple decided it was better to draw the line in the sand for some older machines rather than invest the resources into updating the drivers for these older GPUs.

While Apple had suggested that the hardware limitations were not set in stone back in February, it seems anyone hoping for additional support before Mountain Lion is released will be disappointed. Look on the bright side: both Snow Leopard and Lion are likely to get security fixes for at least the next year, so your machine should continue to hum along fine for now. If Mountain Lion contains updates that are useful to you, however, it may be time to start shopping for a newer Mac.

Promoted Comments

So I wonder if they have programmed ML specifically not to run on these machines or if say you have an older Mac Pro that has been upgraded to a supported GPU if it will let you install. I am willing to bet that soon after or likely even before it ships there will be hacks to get it running on unsupported machines. XPostFacto makes a dramatic return

On those older Mac Pros that shipped with unsupported graphics cards, Apple hasn't deigned to update their firmware to support 64-bit EFI. You can run this command in Terminal to see whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit EFI:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

All of the Macs dropped by Mountain Lion are going to return "EFI32" - if you can hack around that in addition to upgrading your graphics card, you may indeed be able to get Mountain Lion running on an older Mac, but it's a bit of a long shot.

A win for who? Not users, i am sure of that! God! i hate lazy developers so much...

You're not a developer, are you?

Most people aren't. It also lends itself to blaming Windows when someone buys a cheap/crappy video card with poor driver support. Also, calling the big box with all the computer parts in it the "hard drive" or the "cpu" and complaining when "The Internet is down".

I can't argue with that - I just think the phrase 'lazy developer' is generally used by morons who couldn't muster enough code to sum two integers.

I have a relatively old macbook pro (mid 2009), and it seems that I will be able to update it to Mountain Lion, however, my question is... will my macbook have all of Mountain Lion promised features? Or will Mountain Lion follow an iOS-esque approach, and i will indeed have the latest version, but a "lite" one (one with some of the interesting features stripped down due to unclarified "hardware limitations")?

I remember Apple making fun of microsoft for offering so many versions of their OS (starter/home/home premium/ultimate) and making it confusing for the consumer for making a choice, and also pricing every version differently.

I really hope Apple doesn't start making this (like they have done with iOS since the beginning), and even worse, because they would be hiding it from the consumer, as they make you think you have the latest version of the OS, but you are clearly missing some of the features.

I have a relatively old macbook pro (mid 2009), and it seems that I will be able to update it to Mountain Lion, however, my question is... will my macbook have all of Mountain Lion promised features? Or will Mountain Lion follow an iOS-esque approach, and i will indeed have the latest version, but a "lite" one (one with some of the interesting features stripped down due to unclarified "hardware limitations")?

I remember Apple making fun of microsoft for offering so many versions of their OS (starter/home/home premium/ultimate) and making it confusing for the consumer for making a choice, and also pricing every version differently.

I really hope Apple doesn't start making this (like they have done with iOS since the beginning), and even worse, because they would be hiding it from the consumer, as they make you think you have the latest version of the OS, but you are clearly missing some of the features.

It doesn't get Power Nap as that requires a solid-state drive and knowing Apple, it will still only be on Macs that shipped with an SSD. I can see the reasoning behind this one though. Turning on automatically to try and install updates while the machine is in an awkward position is bad for HDD-based systems. I haven't seen any other features that wouldn't be available to the mid-2009 MacBook Pro, which I have as well.

I have a relatively old macbook pro (mid 2009), and it seems that I will be able to update it to Mountain Lion, however, my question is... will my macbook have all of Mountain Lion promised features? Or will Mountain Lion follow an iOS-esque approach, and i will indeed have the latest version, but a "lite" one (one with some of the interesting features stripped down due to unclarified "hardware limitations")?

I remember Apple making fun of microsoft for offering so many versions of their OS (starter/home/home premium/ultimate) and making it confusing for the consumer for making a choice, and also pricing every version differently.

I really hope Apple doesn't start making this (like they have done with iOS since the beginning), and even worse, because they would be hiding it from the consumer, as they make you think you have the latest version of the OS, but you are clearly missing some of the features.

Apple was poking fun at the fact that Microsoft offered a bunch of different editions of Windows at a bunch of different prices. With OS X, there's only one version at one price, and as long as your computer meets the baseline specs, you can install it...but you might miss out on a few features that require newer hardware. They've always done this, since before iOS even existed.

The important thing isn't really whether you can use X or Y new feature, specifically, but that you can install the OS at all - which means you can install and use any third-party apps that take advantage of the new frameworks, APIs, etc. Same with iOS. Yeah, if you're on an iPhone 3GS you get virtually none of the new features in iOS 6 - but just because you'll be able to run it at all, you'll be able to continue using third-party apps that require it.

I would only be upset if it stopped receiving security updates otherwise I don't see an issue.

I agree. And Apple don't have the greatest record of maintaining security updates for older hardware.

Funny, Leopard (10.5) got a security update last month.

Not funny...lucky is more like it. I'm guesing that either 1) their code was backwards compatible with Leopard so the fix was easy to backport and/or 2) it was a very visible security hole - enough for them to consider an exception.

But it was definitely an exception. Other than Flashback and I believe java, no security updates since last summer for Leopard. And I'm sure it's not because it's not vulnerable to anything, but because Apple simply does not support the OS anymore. If you don't believe me, just ask Apple.

It doesn't mean that the OS is suddenly not usable. But it does mean that you're taking a risk using it online, as Apple is not fixing any newly found vulnerabilities.

The security "patch" released in May was specifically for Flashback. There was no generic security patch released. And I put the word patch in quotation marks because it merely disabled older versions of Adobe Flash and removed the Flashback malware. It didn't actually patch the vulnerability. At least that's my understanding of it.

Edit: It doesn't appear to remove the malware itself, just disables Flash:

I get that 6 year old Macs are going to be in trouble. How many PC enthusiasts are planning to run Win8 on 6 year old hardware? Honestly now. Sure, there are people using older hardware. Often, they are running WinXP. Isn't that like Tiger in OSX terms? Clinging to outdated platforms is how Windows got stuck with a registry and all the nightmares that go with it. Requiring a new computer every half a decade is hardly unreasonable. The cooling of the megahertz wars has made you guys soft. Can you imagine playing 2003 games on 1998 hardware?

I get that 6 year old Macs are going to be in trouble. How many PC enthusiasts are planning to run Win8 on 6 year old hardware? Honestly now. Sure, there are people using older hardware. Often, they are running WinXP. Isn't that like Tiger in OSX terms? Clinging to outdated platforms is how Windows got stuck with a registry and all the nightmares that go with it. Requiring a new computer every half a decade is hardly unreasonable. The cooling of the megahertz wars has made you guys soft. Can you imagine playing 2003 games on 1998 hardware?

My oldest "active" PC is from late 2005, still in use with Windows 7. It's not a speed demon, but it has 2GB of RAM and SATA and it does all the basics for my wife. I'll likely install Windows 8 on it, as well. So I can probably squeeze at least a year or two more out if it before my wife screams for something new.

If I had bought an Apple device instead, it would have likely been a PPC (I think?) which means I would have already been beyond any OS support. And even if it was an early x86 system, Snow Leopard would be the last supported OS and its EOL is TBD right now.

I get that 6 year old Macs are going to be in trouble. How many PC enthusiasts are planning to run Win8 on 6 year old hardware? Honestly now.

I wouldn't hesitate to run Windows 8 on six year old hardware. After all a six year old PC would be a Core 2 type of processor. The only reason I'm not planning to upgrade is Microsoft will continue to release security patches for previous versions of their OS making an upgrade not as critical as if they were not.

v3rlon wrote:

Sure, there are people using older hardware. Often, they are running WinXP. Isn't that like Tiger in OSX terms?

There's a significant difference between someone running Windows XP versus one running Tiger: One still receives security patches and the other does not.

v3rlon wrote:

Clinging to outdated platforms is how Windows got stuck with a registry and all the nightmares that go with it. Requiring a new computer every half a decade is hardly unreasonable. The cooling of the megahertz wars has made you guys soft. Can you imagine playing 2003 games on 1998 hardware?

Back in the 90's or even early 00's upgrading to a new PC provided measurable gains...even to the home user. Come the latter part of the 00's computing power had reached a point where basic tasks were easily handled and upgrading didn't buy much. So I think requiring a new computer every five years is unreasonable.

Now I don't expect Apple to indefinitely support older hardware. I have no objection they're planning to obsolete certain hardware. My only wish would be for them provide security patches for older operating systems for at least five years so those whose hardware will be left behind will at least know they're being secured. They were doing that when OS releases were coming out 18-24-30 months apart. While not ideal at least it was around five years. But Snow Leopard will be unsupported three years after release. Do you realize it was the current OS just 13 months ago. At the end of the month, 14 months when Snow Leopard was the current OS, it will become a has been.

The introduction of the Core architecture really changed the game as far as upgrading. Whereas you used to have to get a new computer every two to three years, the life cycles are now much, much longer. I don't consider something with a Core 2 to be obselete in any way.

I love how Apple fanbois think Macs use magical hardware that's somehow different from other PC hardware.

Now where did I say that in that tirade? There is no magic fairy dust, no lockdowns, no activation, its just DSMOS in the installer and the dearth of hardware support in comparison to the class drivers Windows has that makes a Hackintosh a PITA to build if you just try to use any old i-Series computer.

PS. You still cannot build a comparable machine for $500, $500 LESS, sure, but not $500.

Wrong. OS X is not in the slightest a fork of debian (btw, debian not debain) or FreeBSD or linux. For starters, debian is a linux distro which means it is by definition linux. Two, linux is a unix like not a unix unlike OS X, linux stands for Linux is not UNIX btw. FreeBSD is the closest thing to OS X in there. FreeBSD is based off of BSD, OS X is based off of Mach and BSD. However, FreeBSD 1.0 was released in 1993, OS X is based off of NeXT which came before FreeBSD. Also, OS X was based off of BSD not FreeBSD, two very different things especially today. It all boils down to this, OS X is a unix, Linux is well, not a unix. FreeBSD is an old OS but wasn't what OS X is based off of. So OS X is not a fork of anything you mentioned, it's also not a fork of just BSD or Mach (or linux by the way since Linux is not UNIX and OS X is a *nix).

I think what you mean to say here is that OSX is posix compliant. Doesn't make it Unix, per se. Just, you know, a guaranteed level of compatibility.

Eh. BSD was a unix and OS X is a derivation of BSD on some level so it is a unix. Yes, it is also POSIX compliant. Technically a derivation of a unix is still a unix if it retains the interface, which OS X does. At least that is how I know it. You may know it differently but my interpretation is that.

MacOS is not quite Unix if you want to treat it the same way you would treat Solaris or AIX. It is rather like Ubuntu in this respect with common frameworks being ditched in favor of new and shiny and MacOS/Ubuntu centric replacements.

Although all of that is still hidden from view and not something that Apple wants to be very visible. To the end user, MacOS is still a proprietary GUI and Apple only applications.

Wrong. OS X is not in the slightest a fork of debian (btw, debian not debain) or FreeBSD or linux. For starters, debian is a linux distro which means it is by definition linux. Two, linux is a unix like not a unix unlike OS X, linux stands for Linux is not UNIX btw. FreeBSD is the closest thing to OS X in there. FreeBSD is based off of BSD, OS X is based off of Mach and BSD. However, FreeBSD 1.0 was released in 1993, OS X is based off of NeXT which came before FreeBSD. Also, OS X was based off of BSD not FreeBSD, two very different things especially today. It all boils down to this, OS X is a unix, Linux is well, not a unix. FreeBSD is an old OS but wasn't what OS X is based off of. So OS X is not a fork of anything you mentioned, it's also not a fork of just BSD or Mach (or linux by the way since Linux is not UNIX and OS X is a *nix).

I think what you mean to say here is that OSX is posix compliant. Doesn't make it Unix, per se. Just, you know, a guaranteed level of compatibility.

Eh. BSD was a unix and OS X is a derivation of BSD on some level so it is a unix. Yes, it is also POSIX compliant. Technically a derivation of a unix is still a unix if it retains the interface, which OS X does. At least that is how I know it. You may know it differently but my interpretation is that.

MacOS is not quite Unix if you want to treat it the same way you would treat Solaris or AIX. It is rather like Ubuntu in this respect with common frameworks being ditched in favor of new and shiny and MacOS/Ubuntu centric replacements.

Although all of that is still hidden from view and not something that Apple wants to be very visible. To the end user, MacOS is still a proprietary GUI and Apple only applications.

It doesn't matter if the end user doesn't believe it is or if it doesn't "feel" like unix to the average GUI user, it's an official Unix.

The important thing, however, is that while both OS X and Linux are POSIX-compliant, and both have a bash prompt and many other similarities, OS X is not in any way, shape or form a "fork" of Debian or FreeBSD, which was the original claim.

Planned Obsolescence is so fucking evil, and Apple has turned it into an art form.

Is is truly "Planned Obsolescence", however? The OS is no longer supported, so it's a problem in terms of using the system online as there's a security risk involved. But it's not like there's a built-in hardware part that will just go bad at a certain point and will be impossible to fix. And the OS itself isn't time-bombed. That would be true planned obsolescence.

If the device is off-the-grid and is running some process that doesn't require internet access - for example using it for graphics / video / audio projects where you might have it on a local network but not using it for actual Internet use, you could probably run the device until the power supply or HDD finally goes, if you really wanted to.

Granted, I would prefer that Apple support their old OS's with security updates for a little longer than they currently do, but other than that the device is still usable even after it's EOL with the actual vendor.

My Mac Pro 1,1 from 2006 runs the Mountain Lion beta and it might work for the release also (perhaps with mods) to perform the same file swaps in the installer. I do have a much newer graphics card - the original was pathetic the day it was shipped.

I followed the instructions from Jamie Cruickshank's blog titled "How to Install Mountain Lion on MacPro1,1". Search for it if the link below gets munged:

At 80 years of age, having written code in the 1960s in order to time share on DEC-10 and CDC-6000 from a Western Union Teletype, I'm sympathetic to anyone who wants to have the best (I can afford) and latest (not really keeping up any more).

My MacBook Pro was bought in 2009 and considered the last I would probably buy. It's been tweaked as much as I can, and I'm very pleased that it just told me:

I'm happily retired but do miss those days of modeling the circulation in real time with analog and then digital systems connected to home-made multiplexers feeding ink-writing recorders (no 'scopes then). We were cutting edge for our time, but those of you here could teach me many things even as I wiped your noses.

Keep driving ahead. In WW-II the SeaBees (some say the Marines) said, "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer."

Just a heads up, it's not a 32bit gfx driver issue.The core hardware acceleration of OS X has upgraded to require openGL 3.2.If your graphics card supports 3.2 or later you should be able to run mountain lion, though it may require some mucking about.

Just a heads up, it's not a 32bit gfx driver issue.The core hardware acceleration of OS X has upgraded to require openGL 3.2.If your graphics card supports 3.2 or later you should be able to run mountain lion, though it may require some mucking about.

Again: Why does it have to be 1 thing and 1 thing only?

From what's been said, I strongly suspect that it's OpenGL 3.2 and fully 64-bit kernel (assuming that was not already required) and 64-bit EFI.

Just a heads up, it's not a 32bit gfx driver issue.The core hardware acceleration of OS X has upgraded to require openGL 3.2.If your graphics card supports 3.2 or later you should be able to run mountain lion, though it may require some mucking about.

Again: Why does it have to be 1 thing and 1 thing only?

From what's been said, I strongly suspect that it's OpenGL 3.2 and fully 64-bit kernel (assuming that was not already required) and 64-bit EFI.

Dan Aris

If you visit the link I posted a few comments above here, you'll find exactly what I replaced in the Installer file to make Mountain Lion beta run on my 2006 Mac Pro. There was more than one thing, but offhand, I can't remember just which pieces were slipped into the DMG before creating a new installation flash drive.

Well I ran the command you listed on my White MacBook and it comes back 64bit. It seems to me that Apple needs to write 64 bit drivers for the Intel Video Cards it seems ridiculous that they are going to be too lazy to write new video drivers.

While searching for some information about the "OS X Mountain Lion is not compatible with this computer" error message I was getting when trying to purchase Mountain Lion from the App Store, I came across this Apple Support Community forum post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135260?tstart=0

I posted my thoughts about this on that forum, but Apple quickly removed it (literally within a few minutes), because it contained "Discussion of Apple Policies, Procedures or Decisions". So here's a copy of that post with my thoughts on this...

Quote:

Seriously Apple??!! You’ve GOT TO BE KIDDING!! If you're looking to loose clientele fast, this is a GREAT WAY to do it!

I completely agree that you need to have minimum requirements such as OS X v10.6.8 or later, 2GB of memory, 8GB of available space in order to upgrade to the latest OS. That’s perfectly reasonable. BUT… telling us that we need to have a Mac from a more recent year, even if our current one far exceeds those other minimum hardware/software requirements… THAT’S ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS APPLE!!! That’s just a way to try to milk your past customers for new cash and its UNACCEPTABLE! Take for example the system that MHaddon mentions in his post above, which has:

Are you SERIOUSLY expecting folks to spend another $4,000 on a new system with similar specs simply because they bought theirs prior to 2008 or whatever date is it???!!! I DON’T THINK SO! THIS IS ABSURD APPLE! Seriously, GET A GRIP!

On those older Mac Pros that shipped with unsupported graphics cards, Apple hasn't deigned to update their firmware to support 64-bit EFI. You can run this command in Terminal to see whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit EFI:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

All of the Macs dropped by Mountain Lion are going to return "EFI32" - if you can hack around that in addition to upgrading your graphics card, you may indeed be able to get Mountain Lion running on an older Mac, but it's a bit of a long shot.

Not quite true. The late 2008 Xserve returns EFI64 but is officially unsupported by Mountain Lion. There may be hope, though:

i know it means little to you that you are loosing another customer, as i'm sure your new customer base greatly supersedes that of when i became a loyal mac consumer. i am currently running 3 apple computers at my home. a mac pro (2x3 GHz intel dual-core), an older macbook pro, and a mac mini which i use for media on my television. i have purchased at least 10 different iPhones since the original launch date where i camped out to be one of the first owners of the product. i have a 30" cinema display which i love, and i purchased and have paid for a .mac account for multiple years. i have been a loyal consumer of a vast array of mac products for the last 12+ years. i have been that annoying "mac fan boy" who blatantly rants and raves about how amazing apple products are and the company as a whole. i doing so i have converted a number friends, family members and students to "think broader" and switch to apple products. the total cost of products that i have either purchased personally, through work and school, as well as convinced coworkers, students, and loved ones to try i am confident would exceed that of over $100k. primarily at times when your products were much more expensive, you had a much lower market share, and much narrower selection.

i have been an artist/designer/developer for the last 15 years. i switched to apple products about 12 years ago. i have worked a some of the top agencies, ran my own business, and taught at a local university. for many years i have looked up to apple as an example for integrity, good design, customer loyalty and used your company in many examples to portray such values to students and clients.

i am writing you this letter to let you know that my perceptions have changed. it started when apple bullied their consumers by banning the flash player on the iPhone. not by not allowing it, but threatening to void my warranty if i was to do anything to modify my device to allow it. not a very good move. ironically if you would have left that up to consumerism it may have come to a similar conclusion and more to your advantage.

since then i have moved my media purchases (movies, music, books, etc) to amazon. i am very happy with that decision. i am sure i am not the only one as i don't see you boasting about your iTunes statistics at macworld anymore. i now use spotify to play music on my iPhone. this is a great service and works across may platforms and mediums. i have purchased my wife a kindle fire, which she loves. amazon is a great service and has earned my respect, not bullied it. my iPhone is not under contract and i will most likely not be purchasing the iPhone 5. i think google understands their consumer base with is something that i think you lost as the $$$ in product sales and market share soared. thank goodness for microsoft back in the day. i couldn't have imagined how much bullying could have taken place had bill gates not stepped in. it is just sad you are adopting their business model after criticizing it all of these years.it complexes me how a machine which can run very sophisticated software applications such as maya, photoshop, illustrator and after effects all just fine and even simultaneously requires a hardware upgrade to update an os who's biggest upgrade runs a bunch of cloud services. it is obvious that by lowering your cost for software and limiting the hardware that it runs on is a business strategy to force consumers to upgrade their hardware. this would have never happened if your market share was what it was 10 years ago.

since lion you stopped supporting my laptop and mac mini, and since mountain lion you stopped supporting my desktop. since you will no longer support os upgrades on any of my hardware anymore my next product purchases will definitely not be apple products. the irony of it is that Microsoft still supports my hardware. it's a good thing i can run vmware or paralles now along with windows os so switching back could be a much smoother transition. so thank you for that. since i have a great workflow in mac os, i will also be looking into hackintosh and try to contribute my development skills to that cause wherever possible.

we are in a time of economic hardship across america. families, like mine, are trying to stretch the mighty dollar. i have a hard time understanding how forcing me to spend $2,000-$6,000 to upgrade my hardware on a $20 software upgrade makes much sense. especially from a company who's primary success is based off respecting the intelligence of their consumers. the only conclusions i can come to are either based in greed, or the simple fact that the bullied often times become the bully. as a result my love affair with apple products is at its wits end.

Quote:On those older Mac Pros that shipped with unsupported graphics cards, Apple hasn't deigned to update their firmware to support 64-bit EFI. You can run this command in Terminal to see whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit EFI:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

All of the Macs dropped by Mountain Lion are going to return "EFI32"

I have a very late model 2008 MacBook NON-Aluminium. The only hardware difference I can find in comparison to the Aluminum Versions IS that the case is not Aluminum. When I bought this it was actually spec'd out faster and better than the first Aluminum model with the only difference being it was just in a Plastic case. I ran your test. It returns "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">" does this mean there is some other standard of hardware that I can change to be compatible? Or because it is in a plastic case, and has some software code that says "hey I'm plastic", it can't be upgraded? I seriously poured over hardware specs and can no see a difference in the EXACT same computer that was just slammed in an aluminum body. Yeah, yeah... Apple is evil blah blah. I don't care. I know someone for everyone who hates Apple, who hates Microsoft, who hates Linux... semantics don't bother me. I just want to work around it if at all possible and it feels like I'm missing something if ALL the hardware is the same as the compatibility listings I can find. Thanks.

Quote:On those older Mac Pros that shipped with unsupported graphics cards, Apple hasn't deigned to update their firmware to support 64-bit EFI. You can run this command in Terminal to see whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit EFI:

ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi

All of the Macs dropped by Mountain Lion are going to return "EFI32"

I have a very late model 2008 MacBook NON-Aluminium. The only hardware difference I can find in comparison to the Aluminum Versions IS that the case is not Aluminum. When I bought this it was actually spec'd out faster and better than the first Aluminum model with the only difference being it was just in a Plastic case. I ran your test. It returns "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">" does this mean there is some other standard of hardware that I can change to be compatible? Or because it is in a plastic case, and has some software code that says "hey I'm plastic", it can't be upgraded? I seriously poured over hardware specs and can no see a difference in the EXACT same computer that was just slammed in an aluminum body. Yeah, yeah... Apple is evil blah blah. I don't care. I know someone for everyone who hates Apple, who hates Microsoft, who hates Linux... semantics don't bother me. I just want to work around it if at all possible and it feels like I'm missing something if ALL the hardware is the same as the compatibility listings I can find. Thanks.

Thread necromancy aside, a quick look at the table provided by wikipedia shows that the 2008 white Macbook was the last to have:-800MHz Front-side bus-Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics (with 144MB RAM)

The early 2009 (still white, still polycarbonate) Macbook had a slightly slower processor, but a 1066MHz bus and a GeForce 9400M (256MB RAM). The Aluminum MacBook also has the faster bus and new graphics card. It had two processors available, one of which is the slightly-slower 2.0 GHz one (which presumably you compare yours to) and the faster 2.4GHz one.

Based on this, I'd say that dropping your 2008 Macbook has to do with your graphics card, as stated in the article. In that case, I seriously doubt that there is anything you can do to allow upgrades.